Scientists carry out experiments to support or refute hypotheses. A good hypothesis is something that is easily testable, such as: A student enrolled in an MFA in Creative Writing program will produce 100x more pages in one year than an amateur writer with a similar level of experience and skill. Unfortunately, I have no data regarding the pages produced by writers who are and aren’t enrolled in MFA programs. All I have is my own subjective experience, which is this: I transformed from a person too scared to 

​Russell Helms shared his take on yuletide shenanigans with his story 'Holiday Resolve' in our Fall 2018 issue. Could be happier to have Russell with us and the voice and direction of his story really brought this issue together. Perhaps not coincidentally Russell became one of NUNUM's nominees for this year's Pushcart Prize.

We couldn't have been happier when Catherine's work appeared here, it was the one thing we'd been waiting for to pull 'Frogs' together in just the symbiotic kind way we love to do things here. 
Catherine has lived in the Northwest most of her life, a graduate of Stanford University, who has always been drawn to the arts. 

John Van Kirk made us here at NUNUM take another look at the choices we've made with his subltely provocative introspective piece 'Tool Box for Table' which featured in our Fall 2018 issue. Combining John's story with the inherent sense of discovery tactilely brushed into the art of Alexis Avlamis allowed for an interplay between the two that just looped round round until we ended up with one of our best pieces of the year. 

Anay Avoravu gifted us our Fall 2018 cover image 'Honeymoon' and left us spellbound as she piqued the veil of an iconic cultural moment.

Anay Avoravu herself at a young age would travel abroad in search of clients and subjects that would satisfy her obsession with bringing reality to print. Unaccepted in Russia after traveling from Egypt to UAE and around the globe she has found her home in Miami Beach.

Starr is an artist whose work is informed both by the long lineage of artists in her family and by the rich culture of the places that she has lived, mainly Washington DC and Brooklyn, NY. Starr’s primary mission as an artist, educator and scholar is to uplift  the narratives and work of Black artists from the US both past and present. Working towards this end Starr has earned a BA from Roosevelt University, an MA in Museum Studies from Western Illinois and is currently a second year student in the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore in the MFA Community Arts program '19.
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Alexis Avlamis (b. Athens, 1979) is a painter influenced by the Surrealist’s Automatism. His work juxtaposes existing visuals along with fabricated ones, leading to cosmographic landscapes. And that is exactly the spirit we attempted to mirror when we blended Alexis's 'Re-imagining Gulliver Travels' with John Van Kirk's story 'Tool Box for Table'. The result blew us away and is destined to become one of our Pushcart nominations.

Karen Kao is a published novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet. Her debut novel, The Dancing Girl and the Turtle (Linen Press 2017), is the first of four interlocking novels to be set in Shanghai. For more information on Karen and her work, please visit her website at www.inkstonepress.com 

​My name is Barry and I’m a little odd. One day, a couple years ago, I said to myself, “I’m gonna go to writing school and I’m going to learn to write and then I’m going to make my living as an author. Why not? I love to read. Can’t be that hard."

At the time, I was living in Alaska and didn’t care to leave because it was (still is) the best place. So, I checked the University of Alaska website to see if they had a writing program. 12 years prior, I had earned a BA in Philosophy, so I was hoping they had a graduate program. ​They did. Something called an ‘MFA in Creative Writing’.